One of My Best Days of Teaching

January 10, 2018

It's the start of the new semester as well as the new calendar year.  Two of my classes had a student teacher last semester, and even in the classes where there wasn't a student teacher, I sensed a bit of restlessness and stress as we returned for the home stretch of senior year.  I decided we needed to do a reset/refocus, something akin to the kind of reflection many of us do as a new year dawns.  I showed them a couple of short video clips from Pursuit of Happiness and Freedom Writers that focus on chasing your dreams and building community.  We talked about big picture ideas that reflected what we hope to see in the world and how we'd like to see ourselves in it.  I handed out 3 x 5 cards and asked them to anonymously answer the question: What Do I Hope?  I gathered them and read them aloud, and told my kids I'd post them on the wall to help us remember who we are at our core--as a community--as we are progressing through the rest of our year together.

If you've ever wondered if our kids today are shallow or callous or self-centered, perhaps here you have your answer.  I was incredibly impressed with the genuine, sincere, and heart-felt responses:
I hope to be kinder to others.
I hope to be the kind of person others can turn to for help.
I hope I can find my passion and purpose in life.
I hope I can make my parents proud.

I was also a bit broken-hearted by some of the responses:
I hope to finally find true friends.
I hope people notice my silence.
I hope to be able to find a reason to get up each day.
I hope to finally be able to love myself.

Our kids can be goofy and immature and caught up the tiny details of every day life.  But they have big dreams and hopes and aspirations--and many of them are carrying really heavy weights hidden in their hearts.  It eye-opening to me, and to my students as well.  One of my kids shook his head and said, "It's really sad how many people in here are dealing with such heavy feelings.  And we don't even know."

Yeah.  Yes, it is.  So maybe the best way to operate is to treat each other as if we all are.

One of my best days of teaching.

Be The Right One At the Right Time, Redux

December 17, 2014

There are two times of the year when I feel my mother's loss more than any other.  You might think it would be her birthday, or the anniversary of her death.  Those are important days.  But the first day of school every year (she was a teacher too) and Christmas are the days when her presence is strongest.  She instilled in us a love of giving and Christmas spirit which is now an indelible part of the Christmases each of my siblings and I celebrate with our own families.

As we are fully in the holiday season, I am feeling reflective and nostalgic.  I thought I'd repost an excerpt from one of my favorite older posts, because it honors a value I hold dear, and because it honors Mom, who is part of our Christmases, even  though she is no longer with us.

Excerpt from original post (2009):

As we reflect on this season, the message of service is something I feel we have gotten away from over the years in this atmosphere of Looking Out for Number One. As we count our blessings at Christmas time, I think it it important to reflect on not just the people and things for which we are grateful, but also on those who might be struggling, for whom a hand held in service might make all the difference.  This is one of the most important values my mother instilled in her children.

Now, I’m not opposed to looking after myself and my children—of course not. Obviously, it is one of my greatest privileges and responsibilities to look after the moral, emotional, and intellectual well-being of my three children, as well as providing for them their basic safety and shelter needs. However, in providing for them, it is my duty to show them how fortunate we are as a family, and instill in them the desire to help others in need when we can.

There are lots of reasons that people don’t reach out to others—they are struggling with issues of their own, they feel hopeless that their small efforts will make a difference, they feel others might take advantage of their generosity, they feel they don’t have adequate resources to spare, to name a few. Compelling arguments, all, with some truth to them. We all struggle with our own personal issues, be they financial, emotional, or spiritual. And yet, I find that when I reach out to someone else, I view my own difficulties with a more balanced perspective. Those who are working hard just to pay the bills and put food on the table may lament the lack of resources to be able to reach out and help, but really, generosity of spirit is the only necessary resource; you can give of your money, your time, your self. Being of service to others means reaching out in your community and your world with what you perceive as a need, and sometimes, that might even be something as simple as adjusting one’s attitude towards someone in need and listening with a sympathetic ear. Are there those who would take advantage of someone with a generous heart? Sure. I’m an optimist, but I’m not naïve. I truly want to believe the best in others, and don’t mind if every once in awhile I help someone whose spirit is not positive and open. That’s not the point, after all. Perhaps those are the people who are in most need of all, but they just don’t know it yet. In time, perhaps if enough people reach out to them and show them kindness and generosity of spirit, a true positive change can be effected. Finally, for those who feel their ‘drop in the bucket’ won’t make a difference, know this—if you just reach out to one person, you have made a difference, and you never know how that individual effort may manifest itself positively, radiating outward and reaching even more people.

I remember a time in my young life when my mother was struggling. My brothers, sisters, and I may never know the full extent of the hopelessness she must have felt, but I imagine it must have been overwhelming at times—a weight almost unbearable. When my mom chose to leave what had become a dangerous situation for her, she brought along with her four of her five young school-aged children. (The oldest chose to stay.) Her only plan was to seek shelter at the Marjaree Mason Center, but she found, late at night, that there was no room at the inn for a woman with four children. She ended up spending money she intended to feed us with on a hotel room for one night. That was the end of her financial resources until the end of the month. With no home to go to, and virtually no money, we lived out of our car for a couple of weeks, rotating through the only clothes we had brought along—only what we were able to fit in the three suitcases in the trunk of the car. The oldest of the kids who came with her, I was in junior high and acutely aware that it must be obvious to my classmates that I slept in my clothes. My mom was lucky enough to have a few friends in the church take us in here and there for a night or two to brush teeth, take showers, and sit down for a meal. It is one thing to take in a woman in need; to take on four kids as well was truly a burden, and Mom was embarrassed to put people in the position of having to say no if such an offer of help were to stretch them beyond their means. One of the kind families who let us camp out on their floor for a night loaned my mom money to buy peanut butter, jelly, and bread, and that served as our main meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the majority of those two or three weeks until payday. We children complained about it vehemently at the time; I am quite sure we did not comprehend the toll it took on her to not be able to provide anything more. I myself did not eat another peanut butter and jelly sandwich for twenty years after those weeks were behind us.

When payday did come, almost all of it went to first and last month’s rent, and deposits for utilities. My parents were married in the days when a man was in charge of the finances; when my mother started out on her own, she had no credit built up in her name, and no savings to fall back on. She was starting off a babe in the world, with only one paycheck to her name, but with four human beings utterly dependent on her ability to move forward and survive. I’m sure there were days she didn’t want to get out of bed, but there were people along the way who went out of their comfort zone and reached out to help. I’m sure the lady at the church who donated a box of canned goods didn’t know if her ‘drop in the bucket’ was going to ensure that we survived as a family, but she knew that on that day, it made a difference to us. I’m sure the man who knew someone he could encourage to rent a home to Mom even though she had no credit history didn’t know if it would do any good, but he did it anyway. People who let us stay on their floors for a night couldn’t give us permanent residence, but they let us get one day closer to being on our own. Those teachers who noticed that something seemed to be different in our lives and checked in with us to make sure everything was okay—we learned that people were watching us, and were looking for ways to give of their finances, of their time, of themselves. We noticed, and it made a difference.

It didn’t ever become easy, but it certainly did become better. It was because there were people who chose not to just ‘Look Out for Number One,’ and reach out to someone in their community who was in need that our family survived and ultimately thrived. There were others who chose not to help because they said she got herself into her own problems, and it was her responsibility to get out. There were those who said she shouldn’t have had so many children. (Easy to say after the fact!) There were those who said they were worried about looking like they were ‘taking sides’ and therefore didn’t want to get involved. The reality is, that’s what a lot of us do—it’s easy to rationalize inaction by judging someone’s actions and saying they don’t deserve help. Did Mom always make the best decisions every time? Of course not. Do any of us? Is that really the best way to judge if another human being is worthy of another human being reaching out a hand?

Mom was a giving and loving human being. She sometimes had the financial means to reach out to others as the years passed, but more often did not. That did not keep her from reaching out. I think she lived constantly with the knowledge of how important service, in whatever form, is, at the most basic and individual level. She didn’t worry that her ‘drop in the bucket’ would be lost; if she saw a need she could fill, she did it. She raised us all to look at the world through those eyes as well, and as we are all adults now, I am proud to see the ways my brother and sisters put that service into action in their own communities. This is one of the most important values I hope to pass on to my children as well.

Are we all going to go out and change the world? All at once? Tomorrow? No. And that’s okay. We don’t have to wait for the grand gestures. One day at a time, one person at a time, we make a difference. The exponential possibilities are endless, as my drop joins your drop which adds to his and hers and theirs. The potential for good is limitless.

Don’t wait for someone else to get up and get the ball rolling. Be the Right One at the Right Time for someone. Anyone. Donate blood, donate to charities, sponsor a child, reach out to families in your neighborhood who might need a sitter but can’t afford one, tutor a struggling child, champion the fight against illiteracy, or breast cancer, or fight for autism awareness. Find ways to encourage and support our troops, or their families left behind, or volunteer in your church nursery, for the Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, or the PTA. Find service in a kind word extended, or a shoulder to cry on. Don’t wait for the big opportunities to come along; opportunities for service surround us every day. Be the one to start building that community, one drop at a time. You may never know the impact you may have, but you will know that you have made a conscious choice to act on behalf of another human being. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Beliefs and Values

April 6, 2009

When we are very young, we get our belief systems and values, whatever they may be, imparted to us through our parents or other influential adults in our lives. We see what they do, and how they behave, and hear what they speak. For some of us, the teaching is direct, and for others of us, the teaching is more through example, or experience.

For most of us, the teenage years are a process of beginning to question those core value systems. Some question those values in a loud and vehement demonstration that rejects all authority, some do it in a quiet, introspective way. There's lots of in-between, too. There's no question that that's why the teen years can be such difficult ones to traverse, both for the teen in question and the parents involved.

Now, admittedly, there are some who never delve much into questioning their parents, and there are some who do a complete 180 just to spite their parents, rather than through a conscious choice to adhere to a particular belief set. But for most of us, at that age when we are starting to come into our own and are beginning to navigate the waters of adulthood, we begin to see that, "Because Mom and Dad say so" is not a strong enough basis for a belief system. We want to know WHY. We begin to weigh the merits of this belief over that one, and why we should choose to behave in a particular manner and not in another. We decide what makes sense to us, and what perhaps needs a little rethinking in our own minds to sit comfortably in our own psyches.

Some of us ultimately come back to a values set that is remarkably similar to our parents' and some of us stray about as far as we can go. More often than not, though, it is a middle ground where we find ourselves, adapting to a new era, a new generation, a new social set of circumstances. What I find interesting, though, and not just a little disturbing, is the view that because I believe a particular thing (about religion, about philosophy, about social policies, about politics, etc.) that may be different than someone else's belief, it must be because I am blindly following someone else's values set (my parents'?) and not my own.

I am my own person with beliefs that I have wrestled through and considered deeply. I have asked the questions why? and why not? I have questioned the way in which I was raised, and the impact it had on me as a human being, as a person with a tiny place in this grand universe. And yet, I do not claim to have all of the answers. I do not claim that anyone who believes differently than I do is wrong, or is blindly ignorant, or worse yet, stupid. I can recognize that if someone's view of the world is different than mine is, there can be merit to that viewpoint. As long as one's beliefs don't infringe on the freedoms or well-beings of other individuals, I am open to hearing those viewpoints. If, ultimately, I disagree, it doesn't mean that I think that person is, by default, a blindly following sheep. I can respect their line of thinking--I can respect them as a person--without having to agree with their world view.

Ironically, I am not always met with the same open-mindedness. I resent the implication that because I don't hold exactly the same belief set as someone else, it must be because I am not intelligent enough to have considered the 'right' answer. There are those who say with derision (or worse, pity) that I have derived my beliefs from my parents and the way I was raised. It's amazing to me to think they believe they are not influenced by their upbringing--it is impossible to objectively dissociate one's self from one's childhood; of course we are all influenced by it. There are those who say because I hold this belief or that I am an ignorant follower--and yet they want me to, without question, follow their lead, because they have the 'right' answer? I welcome questions, I welcome intelligent discussion, and I welcome dynamic interaction that leads us all to a greater understanding of where we are all coming from. This is how we define and redefine why and how we believe what we believe. These conversations cannot be held if one side is only interested in mocking the other. It's interesting (and sad) to me that those who often claim to be the most 'open-minded' because of their 'progressive and unique views' (shared by many, often including their own parents) are the ones least interested in engaging in real discussion.

Like most parents, I hope to show my children what I believe about religion, philosophy, social policies, politics, etc. Even more than that, I hope to show them why I believe such things. Part of that why will be because I believe that no human being has all the 'right' answers, and that by being truly open to others' ideas, we all continue to grow and gain new insights. I don't want my children to blindly follow my lead, or anyone else's. I want them to know that it's okay to question why, and as a matter of fact, I want them to question why. Most importantly, I want them to know that when they have beliefs and values that sometimes come into conflict with mine, as I know they will, that I welcome an open, honest, and intelligent discussion with them that does not belittle or demean either of our viewpoints. There are too many other people in the world who want to make life's discussions a battlefield.